A vacuum cleaner is a device that uses an air pump to create a partial vacuum to remove surface dust and dirt through suction applied to a cleaning head or to a vacuum hose. Vacuums are excellent for cleaning floors, including carpeted floors, wooden floors, tile floors, and the like. Regardless of the type of vacuum cleaner, most incorporate a vacuum hose that may be used with a variety of specialized suction heads or attachments useful for specialized cleaning purposes.
While vacuum cleaners prove exemplary and highly useful in cleaning floors and other horizontal surfaces, cleaning stairs with standard vacuum cleaners and standard vacuum hose suction head or attachments has long proved a difficult task. A stairway or stairs consist of a flight or series of steps for going from one level to another, as in a building. The steps are characterized by alternating horizontal treads and risers, which must be periodically cleaned. Although standard vacuum cleaning heads and vacuum hose attachments of standard vacuum cleaners prove adequate for cleaning horizontal surfaces, including horizontal treads of stairs, cleaning the vertical risers with standard vacuum heads and standard vacuum hose attachments has long proved cumbersome and challenging.